Coupling of Pervaporation system with Fermentation Process Coupling of Pervaporation system with Fermentation Process

The ethanol fermentation process using beet molasses as the feedstock has been studied. The fermentation process, which was coupled with a membrane separation unit (Pervaporation), was compared to a conventional batch process. Ethanol was produced by Saccharomyces cerevisiae ATCC 9763 and recovered by pervaporation system using a composite polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) membrane with 10 μm thickness and 0.0132 m surface area. Initial sugar concentration was adjusted to 60g/l and fermentation lasted for 120 hours. Sugar consumption, ethanol production, cell growth and also Flux and Selectivity of membrane were measured by a function of time. Sugar conversion, ethanol productivity and cell yield in the coupled system were %94.25, 0.69 . gr lit hr and 0.107 utilized sugar gr cell gr respectively. Also average flux and selectivity of 0.204 hr m kg × 2 and 7.993 respectively were achieved.